BBVA Wallet turns 3, inching closer to the seven-million download mark
Launched in December 2013, the footprint of BBVA’s first global digital product continues growing throughout the world
Seven million downloads. Barely three years after its launch, BBVA Wallet reigns as the leading digital card management product. With local versions already in Chile, the U.S., Spain, Turkey and Mexico, all adapted to meet each country’s needs, BBVA Wallet was released in Colombia a bit over a month ago. All this has helped BBVA Wallet to close 2016 slightly under the 7-million global downloads mark, outperforming its annual growth targets by 20%.
In these three years, the adoption of the agile methodology, whereby projects are developed by multidisciplinary teams, has allowed to dramatically reduce the time-to-market for product updates and upgrades.
Take-off in Spain
In Spain, where it first launched, BBVA Wallet enjoyed a great reception from the start. In its first year alone, the app topped the best mobile banking solution category in the Contactless & Mobile Awards (CMA 2014), a Visa-sponsored competition with entrants from all across Europe. The app’s first iteration allowed customers to control the movements of their credit cards right from their handsets, and make mobile payments, thanks to its NFC technology.
Over a short period of time, the application has evolved to cover the needs of its customers, deploying new functionalities such as the possibility to temporarily turn “on" and “off” linked credit cards. Today, after the latest update, app users enjoy a broad range of distinctive functionalities, which allows them to do anything from applying for a debit, prepaid and credit card in three easy steps, choosing how they want to pay for the balances on their credit cards and break down these balances into fixed monthly installments, even delay the payment of a month’s total expense.
Download trend since launch in 2013
Geolocalization, a key feature
BBVA Wallet’s latest Spanish version now comes with an upgraded system for managing promotions, which can now be classified based on the user’s proximity to the store offering a promotion, thanks to geolocalization. Both in the Android and iOS stores, the app is rated higher than any other app released by any other its banking peers.
In Mexico, BBVA Wallet was the first banking app to hit the market. The app is mainly aimed at online-shopping customers. BBVA Bancomer also launched a safe virtual card for online payments that allows users to earn reward points. BBVA Wallet customers in Mexico shop online four times more often than any other customer.
Despite its global reach, BBVA Wallet’s features have been adapted to each geographical region. Turkey, where the application's name is Bonus Flas, may be the best example of this. Released by Garanti Bank last November, the app broke the million download threshold in a very short time. In this market, the application’s potential lies in the promotions system, which has become wildly popular among younger users.